The Oakhaven Sawmill wasn’t a building; it was a corpse left to rot in the open air.
I parked the truck at the edge of the perimeter fence, where the chain link had been peeled back like skin from a wound. The engine ticked as it cooled, the only sound competing with the low, mournful howl of the wind cutting through the structure’s broken ribs.
I stepped out into the mist. The air here was different. It didn’t smell like the clean pine of the forest or the wet ozone of the river. It tasted of iron oxide and ancient grease, a metallic tang that coated the back of my throat like blood.
“The Kingdom,” I whispered.
That’s what Elias had called it in the journal. The Kingdom of Rust.
I looked up. The main processing plant towered above me, a cathedral of corrugated steel and black glass that vanished into the fog. It was a monument to the town’s dead industry, a place where trees had been stripped, processed, and devoured. Now, it was waiting to process us.
I checked the revolver in my pocket one last time. Five rounds. Cold steel. It felt heavy, an anchor trying to drag me down into the mud, but I held onto it. It was the only thing connecting me to the reality that this wasn’t a game.
“I’m here, Elias!” I shouted.
My voice cracked, small and insignificant against the roar of the wind.
“I’m here for the wedding!”
No answer. Just the groan of a loose metal sheet banging against a support beam somewhere high above. Clang. Clang. Clang. Like a church bell tolling for a funeral.
I walked through the gap in the fence. The ground was a slurry of oil-stained mud and sawdust that had decomposed into a black sludge. Every step was a battle to keep my footing.
I approached the main loading bay. The massive sliding doors were rusted open, stuck on their tracks, creating a gaping maw of darkness that seemed to breathe cold air onto my face.
I pulled the flashlight from my belt. I didn’t turn it on yet. I wanted my eyes to adjust. I wanted to see the shadows before I gave them a target.
I stepped across the threshold.
The darkness inside was absolute. It pressed against my skin, heavy and suffocating. The ceiling was lost in the gloom, fifty feet up, a trellis of catwalks and conveyor belts where spiders built webs the size of bedsheets.
I clicked the light on.
The beam cut a solid cone through the dust motes, illuminating a landscape of industrial nightmare. Massive conveyor belts lay silent and still, looking like the tracks of a giant tank. Circular saw blades, six feet across and red with rust, stood frozen in their housings, jagged teeth waiting to bite.
It was a maze. A labyrinth of steel and shadow.
“Elias,” I called out, my voice echoing, bouncing off the metal surfaces until it sounded like a chorus of ghosts. “I brought the ring.”
I reached into my pocket with my free hand and touched the smooth river stone. The token.
I moved forward, following the main conveyor line. My boots rang out on the concrete floor, too loud, too exposed. I felt eyes on me. Not the eyes of the town, judging and whispering, but his eyes. The eyes of the boy who had lived in my walls.
He was up there. Somewhere in the rafters. Watching his Bride walk down the aisle.
Terror clawed at my throat, a cold hand squeezing my windpipe. I wanted to run. I wanted to turn around and sprint back to the truck, back to the police station, back to Seattle.
He has Julian.
The thought grounded me. It turned the fear into fuel.
I passed a control booth, its windows shattered. Inside, a dusty calendar from 1999 hung on the wall, the days marked off with X’s until they just stopped. The day the mill closed. The day the town died.
The deeper I went, the colder it got. The sheer mass of the iron machinery sucked the heat out of the air.
I swept the light left and right. Shadows jumped and danced, looking like men, looking like monsters. A pile of rags in the corner looked like a body until I kicked it and rats scattered, squealing.
“Come out!” I screamed, the anger finally breaking through the dread. “Stop hiding! You wanted me here? I’m here!”
Creak.
It came from above.
I snapped the light upward.
A catwalk ran the length of the ceiling, a rusted metal grate suspended by chains.
Nothing. Just the swaying of a chain in a draft I couldn’t feel.
“You’re not a ghost, Elias,” I hissed to the empty air. “You’re just a man. A man who bleeds.”
I lowered the light, scanning the floor ahead.
And then I saw it.
In the thick layer of dust and sawdust coating the concrete, there was a path. Drag marks. Two distinct lines, parallel and uneven, as if something heavy had been pulled through the dirt.
Or someone.
My stomach dropped. The drag marks led toward the center of the mill, toward the “Green Chain”—the sorting table where the lumber used to be graded.
I broke into a run, following the tracks.
“Julian!” I shouted. “Julian!”
The silence of the mill seemed to deepen, mocking me.
I rounded a massive debarking machine, a cylinder of spikes that looked like an iron maiden turned on its side.
Beyond it, the mill floor opened up into a central arena.
And I heard it.
A sound. Low. Wet.
Uhhhhhh…
It was a groan. A sound of pain so deep it bypassed language and went straight to the brain stem.
I stopped, swinging the light wildly.
“Julian?”
Uhhhh… El… ara…
It was coming from the center.
I ran forward, my boots slipping on a patch of oil. I caught myself on a railing, the rust biting into my palm, and aimed the light into the middle of the Green Chain area.
There, in the center of the sorting floor, the machinery had been cleared away.
A single wooden chair sat in the middle of the open space.
And strapped to it, his head hanging low, his white shirt stained dark with blood, was Julian.
“Oh god,” I gasped, stumbling forward.
He looked bad. His face was swollen, bruised purple and black. One eye was swollen shut. His hands were zip-tied behind the chair, the plastic cutting into his wrists. His left leg was extended at an unnatural angle, the pant leg torn and soaked in red.
“Julian!”
I dropped to my knees beside him, holstering the gun—a mistake, my training screamed, but I couldn’t hold it and touch him at the same time.
I touched his face. His skin was clammy, cold as the iron around us.
“Julian, look at me. Open your eyes.”
He groaned again, his head lolling back. His good eye fluttered open. It was glassy, unfocused, the pupil blown wide. Concussion. Or drugs.
“El… ara…” he rasped. His lips were split. Blood coated his teeth. “Run…”
“I’m not running,” I said, tears stinging my eyes. I fumbled for my pocket knife to cut the ties. “I’m getting you out.”
“No…” He coughed, a wet, rattling sound that terrified me. “Trap… it’s a… trap…”
I froze.
I looked around the circle of light.
The chair wasn’t just sitting in the middle of the floor.
It was surrounded.
Arranged in a semi-circle facing Julian, sitting on overturned buckets and crates, were figures.
I shone the light on them.
They weren’t people.
They were the guests.
Sarah Miller. Ms. Albright. Becca Trent.
Elias had brought them. He had stolen them from the morgue after all, dragging them here in the dark.
They were propped up, their stiff limbs forced into sitting positions. Sarah was wearing a veil made of dirty lace. Ms. Albright held a bouquet of dead weeds duct-taped to her hands. Becca was wearing a top hat—Dr. Dan’s hat—shoved down over her ruined skull.
They were the jury.
“Jesus Christ,” I whispered, recoiling.
The smell hit me then. Not just the mill. The smell of decay. The smell of the grave unsealed.
“He… made me… watch…” Julian whispered, a tear cutting through the blood on his cheek. “He made me… apologize…”
“Shhh,” I said, my hands shaking so hard I dropped the knife. “It’s okay. I’m here.”
Clap. Clap. Clap.
The sound of slow, sarcastic applause echoed from the darkness above the Green Chain.
I snatched the revolver from my pocket, spinning around, aiming the light and the gun into the black void.
“Show yourself!” I screamed.
“You’re late,” a voice boomed.
It wasn’t the raspy whisper from the phone. It was deep, authoritative, projected with a theatrical power that filled the cavernous space.
Elias stepped out of the shadows on the elevated platform overlooking the sorting floor. He was twenty feet up, looking down at us like a king from a balcony.
He was wearing a suit.
It was old, moth-eaten, a tuxedo that was two sizes too small for his massive frame. The sleeves ended at his forearms, revealing the scars and the dirt. He wore a bow tie that was crooked.
But on his face, he wore a mask.
Not a ski mask. Not a clown mask.
He was wearing a welding mask. The glass visor was flipped up, revealing his eyes—those terrible, beautiful river-stone eyes—shining with a manic, terrifying joy.
“The Bride is late,” he said, spreading his arms wide. “But the Groom forgives her. Because she looks so beautiful.”
He pointed a gloved finger at me.
“Did you bring the ring, Princess?”
I stood up, placing myself between him and Julian. I leveled the gun at his chest. The distance was too far for a snub-nose, but I had to try.
“I brought this,” I said.
Elias laughed. It was a broken sound, like gears grinding without oil.
“A gun,” he said, sounding disappointed. “That’s not a ring. That’s a toy. The Bad Prince gave you that toy. Does it make you feel safe?”
“Come down here, Elias,” I said. “Come down here and face me.”
“I am facing you,” he said. He leaned over the railing. “I see you, Elara. I see the girl who broke the wall. I see the girl who killed the dog.”
He looked at Julian.
“And I see the liar. The thief who stole my shoes.”
“Let him go,” I said. “This is between us. You and me. E + E.”
“It is between us,” he agreed. “But first, we have to have the trial.”
He gestured to the dead women sitting in the circle.
“The jury is seated. The defendant is bound.”
He looked at me, his expression shifting from manic joy to a deadly serious calm.
“And you, my love,” he said. “You are the Judge.”
He raised his hand. In it, he held a remote control. A simple, industrial switch with a red button.
“The floor beneath the Bad Prince,” he said softly. “It’s the drop chute. For the sawdust. It goes down to the incinerator.”
My blood ran cold.
“If you shoot me,” he said, his thumb hovering over the button. “My finger slips. He falls. And he burns.”
“Don’t,” I whispered.
“Then put the gun down,” he commanded. “And take your place on the bench.”
I looked at Julian. He was shaking his head weakly, his eyes pleading with me to shoot, to save myself.
I looked at Elias. The monster I had made.
I slowly lowered the gun.
“Good,” Elias said. “Now. Court is in session.”